Indiana Jones (Finally)

Yesterday we finally got to go see the Indiana Jones movie. What can I say? It was AWESOME! I think it was just as good as the first one except some of the stuff was a little far fetched. I won't say anything more for the benefit of those that haven't yet gone to see it. We went to the theater that we went to the first time we tried to see it. The parking lot only had three cars in it. We thought, "uh oh". But I checked on Fandango and got the time before we left home. There was absolutely NOBODY in the lobby and we even had to go to the snack bar to buy our tickets. We went in and there was not a single, solitary soul in there. We weren't early, in fact it was 11:25 when we sat down and the movie started at 11:30. Nobody else ever came in so we had our own private showing. LOL

After the movie we went to have some lunch. We found this cute little diner right by the theater. We both ended up ordering fish and chips. When our food arrived I asked for cocktail sauce for my fish and was told they didn't have any. Hmmmmm, well I'm not eating fish and chips without cocktail sauce. I decided to box it up and take it home for dinner and ordered a cheeseburger instead. When it came I asked for a pickle. "We don't have any pickles". **SIGH**

After that we just went to the grocery store and came home. I heated up the leftover fish and chips for dinner and enjoyed it with my own cocktail sauce. :)

Today was Ashton's graduation from preschool. He will be going to kindergarten this fall and that will be his last year at this school. They used to keep the kids till 5th grade but no more. They all sat in chairs in front of the audience with their "graduation caps" on. The "ceremony" lasted for an hour and a half with the kids singing 16 songs! They were so cute. Reilly sang along as she knew all the songs too. One of the little kids got stage fright and went crying into his mother's arms. Ashton had to be told to keep quiet. He's quite the class clown. Did I mention how cute they were?


Coming out


He's having a good time


He's not


Concentrating really hard


Mama and Daddy are soooooo proud

Catching Up

Boy, I just can't believe how fast time goes by. I'm really trying to keep up with my blog but when I go to write it I discover it's been almost a week since the last time I wrote. We're just busy, busy, busy.

We still haven't made it to see the Indiana Jones movie. We tried again last Sunday as I said we would. We found the theater okay, it was in a really cool outdoor mall in downtown Salt Lake City. We went inside to get our tickets and there was no line whatsoever. Cool, I thought. We went to pay and the guy turned his computer screen around for me to pick one of the 10 or so seats that were left! What???!!! You're kidding, right? No, he wasn't kidding. We certainly weren't going to go watch a movie in that crowded theater. I don't like crowds and since Rod retired a few years ago we have the luxury of being able to do things on weekdays without crowds. We are going to try again in the morning on Tuesday.

The kids and grandkids came over for dinner and playtime on Saturday. It was really windy here again and the park has quite a few empty sites right in front of us so they brought their kites. Now, these aren't the kind of kites we had when we were kids. In fact, kids can't even fly these kites. But, I think they spent more time untangling string than they did flying the kites. Dinner was just burgers on the grill and hotdogs for Ashton & Reilly.

They REALLY love the playground here.






Is she going to fly both of them??



That's a REALLY BIG knot!!



All he gets to do is throw it up into the air




"Helping" Daddy


YAY!! FINALLY airborne


On Monday Michele's in-laws Dave & Betty came over along with Michele, Todd, Ashton & Reilly. It wasn't supposed to rain but at 6:30 I was awakened by rain hitting the bedroom window. I thought maybe it would end soon so I just went back to sleep. When I got up and actually looked outside the sky didn't look like the rain was going to end anytime soon. *SIGH* We were planning on barbecuing steaks and veggies. They weren't coming over until around 4:00 so I still had hopes of the rain stopping. At least it wasn't windy so Rod was able to put out the awning so he could bbq under cover. That didn't last very long as the wind kicked up again so the awning had to be put away. Well, by the time everybody arrived the rain had stopped. It wasn't as warm as I would have liked but we were able to eat outside. The picnic tables here aren't like what you usually see in a campground. Instead of the wooden rectangular shaped tables we have round plastic tables. The benches can be moved so that if you're not using them they go under the table. Pretty cool.

Dave & Betty left but Michele & Todd stayed a little while longer. When Michele went out to start the car to go home it wouldn't start. Dead battery. The door had been left open all day and the battery drained. Of course nobody had jumper cables. It was late so we couldn't ask around the campground. She has roadside assistance so they came out a few hours later (always takes a few hours, doesn't it?) and jump started it. Ashton & Reilly had fallen asleep a few hours earlier so we told them to just leave them and they could pick them up after work on Tuesday. So much for going to the movies. Oh well, as I said earlier we have the luxury of being able to go whenever we want. So, we'll try again today. I'll let everybody know if it was worth the wait.

Pony Express RV Resort

Believe it or not those two pictures were taken today. One was looking east and the other was looking west.

We are really filling up here at the Pony Express. A lot of the rigs here belong to people who work on the refineries. I'd say probably more than half. We can tell because we see people come and go but others have been here before we got here. This park has only been open since October and believe it or not there have been people here since it opened. I couldn't imagine being here in the winter.

We went to look at some other parks in the area yesterday because I really don't like this park. As I mentioned the other day there's just too much concrete and not enough "ambiance" for me. Well, I sure got an eyeful and I guess this park's not so bad after all. Mountain Shadows spots are even closer together than this one and said we couldn't have the monthly rate for July. We'd have to pay $177 per week. OH MY GOSH!!! You should have seen that place. I wish I'd taken pictures. It's not worth $100 a week much less $177. From there we went to the KOA in the area and it wasn't much better than Mountain Shadows. They said they didn't have any monthly sites and we'd have to pay the $225 weekly amount. Are you kidding me???!!! Unbelievable what these parks are charging. At least this is clean, new and has a GREAT playground for the grandkids. We're still going to look at the State Parks in the area and see about getting into those.

Today we checked on Fandango.com to find out where the new Indiana Jones movie was playing. There was a matinee at a theater in nearby Bountiful. I checked it on the Garmin and of course it didn't show up there. Fandango had directions so I printed those out and we set out to see the movie. It started at 2:30 so we left at 2:00 in plenty of time to go the 5 miles to get there. Well, the directions were horrible and we couldn't find the theater. We finally stopped at a gas station and the kid inside told us how to get there. OMG, let me tell you we would have NEVER found it without his directions. By the time we got there it was 3:30 so we decided no way were we going to go into a movie after it started. We just went back home. It's Friday and the movie just came out so we'll wait for another day.

When we got home I checked some other theaters in the area and decided we're going to wait till Sunday morning when everybody's in church and we'll go to the first showing at 11:00. We used to do that a lot on Sunday mornings. The theaters are pretty empty then and you only pay the matinee price. Hope it's worth it, we sure did like the first three. There was a marathon on the SciFi channel last weekend and we watched all three.

The kids and grandkids are coming over this weekend and we'll do burgers tomorrow and then on Monday Michele's in-laws are coming over and we'll do steaks for them.

Another Birthday Party

Ashton's "real" birthday was yesterday so we celebrated with his other grandparents, Dave & Betty and my daughter, Michele and son-in-law Todd. Betty worked all day and then came home and put on some kind of spread. Wow, yummy oven baked brisket, potatoes, peas, corn, a wonderful spinach salad and bread. We were going to bring an ice cream cake but Betty still had a whole gallon of ice cream that she had bought for the other party not knowing that the party place supplied the ice cream. We probably could have had Michele just bring the leftover cake because now they have TWO leftover cakes. We didn't bring candles but Betty found one so at least he got to blow out a candle.

Before we went to the party we stopped at Walmart to pick up clothes and toys and figured since we were there we'd get a few grocery items we needed. I really don't like shopping at Walmart for groceries. They just don't have a good selection of the things I need. I haven't been able to find fresh herbs, no barley (for soup), their rice section was pretty much wiped out and no Panko bread crumbs. GRRRRR. So we had to find a grocery store anyway. We found an Alberton's (which I LOVE) and of course, they had all the things Walmart didn't. They even had Calrose rice which is my absolute favorite. We could not get it when we lived in Florida so every time we went to visit relatives in Washington State I would buy a couple of 10 lb bags and take it home in my carryon. LOL It's not that I'm a rice snob but I just like the Japanese sticky rice.

Today is a really crappy day here. The temps have dropped at least 40 degrees from yesterday. Today we're at 46 degrees right now and the high yesterday was 92. I stowed the satellite dish last night when we went to bed because it was supposed to get really windy. It was, but it didn't keep us awake. It also rained but apparently not that hard because we didn't even hear it on the roof. We're just staying in today and not doing anything. I'm thawing out spaghetti that I froze for dinner so I'm not even cooking today.

Ashton's 2nd cake


He gets so embarrased when we sing


What's up with their hair???


Ashton really likes his presents


Reilly really likes the bags the presents come in

Salt Lake City, Utah

Well, we finally made it to Salt Lake City. We're at a brand new place called the Pony Express RV Resort. We don't normally stay at places like this but SLC doesn't have a whole lot of choices. The KOA was full and there is another campground down in Draper (which is actually closer to the kids) but I didn't really like the looks of it from the pictures. It's called Mountain Shadows RV Park and we're going to go take a look at it while we're here. We may just move down there anyway. I personally don't like the place we're in. It's just too crowded and too much concrete. The staff is really nice and it is clean but I just don't want to spend 2 months here.

Yesterday was grandson Ashton's 5th birthday party. His birthday isn't until the 20th but you can't have a kid's party on a Tuesday. That's the main reason we had to get here by Saturday. We really wanted to be there for his party. Not that he even noticed the grandparents there. His party was held at this place that has a bunch of bounce houses and other stuff for kids to play on. As usual, in these kinds of places there were a TON of kids running around and several other parties and it was really, really LOUD.

Soooooo, my blog today is mostly pictures of the grandkids.

Reilly and Ashton spent the night with Nana and Papa Rod



Ashton's party





The pinata was a BIG hit




They both got a new scooter

Canyon Lake, TX, New Mexico and Utah

Holy Cow!!! It's already the 14th??? We're almost to Salt Lake City!! Okay, but let me tell you what's been going on. I have to warn you though, it's a long one.

We went to Canyon Lake in Texas the day before we left San Antonio on the 8th. We're just looking for options for when we return in the winter. We have reservations at Lake Braunig for 2 months in Nov and Dec but wanted to look around for some other places. We don't want to stay in the same place for the whole 4 or 5 months that we're going to be there. Canyon Lake has an Army Corp of Engineers park that is really nice. Nice BIG sites and almost all have a view of the lake. You're only supposed to be able to stay for 2 weeks but we talked to the camphosts there and they said it's not enforced in the winter. They LOVE winter Texans! That's funny cuz living in Florida we hated the winter Floridians (aka New Yorkers). LOL

Hmmmmmm, really??



Lots of deer here



Waiting for dinner?




After we left San Antonio we drove to Big Springs, TX just for the night. Pretty uneventful trip which we really like but, good grief, Texas is sooooooo boring to drive through. Pretty much all we saw were cows, windmills and oil derricks.



We left Big Springs and drove to Amarillo. Boy, was it windy. We actually thought about staying put for another day but decided it wasn't really THAT bad. I got on the RV Dreams chatroom that night and asked about places to stay in Gallup, New Mexico where we were headed. I got a resounding "DON'T STAY IN GALLUP" from just about everybody in the chatroom that night. Linda suggested a casino with a RV Park so we looked it up online. It's called the Sky City Casino. $25 a night and a $5 free slot play for each of us so it would end up costing only $15. Casinos usually have pretty cheap, good food too so we called and they said they had plenty of room so no need for a reservation. We pulled in and boy, did they ever have room. There was probably about 50 sites and only 3 rigs at that time. Another rig pulled in later but that was it. We unhooked and drove over to the casino because the "shuttle" was pretty much nonexistant. We each got $100 to play with and I imediately hit a 6 spot Keno machine for $400!!! WOOHOO!!! We were thinking about staying here for a few days since we drove so far but in the morning we decided to move on.

We got on the road by 10:00 and made it to Gallup where we headed north on 491 through the Navajo Indian reseration. It was only a two lane highway so Rod was pulling over a lot to let cars pass since we only drive 55 mph due to the price of diesel. As a car was approaching Rod started to pull over a little and when he looked out the window he saw smoke coming from the rear tire of the 5th wheel. We had a blowout!!! We got off the road and checked the damage. The tire was pretty much shredded. We have a spare but no way to jack up the rig. I called our insurance company because we're covered for tire blowouts. Since we were in the middle of nowhere it took quite a bit of effort by the guy at the insurance company to find someone to come out on a Sunday (and it was Mother's day). He finally called the Navajo police and they referred him to the Shiprock police which was about 75 miles away. He called me back and told me that they were also looking for someone. I talked to the dispatcher in Shiprock and she told me she would call me back. Apparently she couldn't get through on my cell so the Sargeant called and said he was sending an officer out to check up on us to make sure we were okay. What a nice guy! The officer showed up and said he would check back on us later to see if anyone had come to change the tire. FINALLY after 4 hours someone from Farmington came and had the tire changed in about ten minutes. We drove to Farmington and stayed the night as it was getting dark. The next morning we went to Discount Tire and had all four tires replaced. Ouch!! Even though we've only been in our rig for about 5 months it sat in storage for 2 years while we were waiting to sell our house. We feel much better now with new tires. Whew!! What a day!!

Bad news




We finally got on the road at about 11:00 in the morning and headed for Moab, Utah. Oh my gosh, what a beautiful place. We stayed at a KOA in Moab and man, was it packed. It was so cold when we got there. We got all set up and then the skies opened up and it poured down rain. How nice that it waited till we were done.

After the rain


The next morning we headed out for Arches National Park. I had been looking forward to this for so long but since it was so cold we decided to just drive the park road and not get out to hike. Most of the arches you could see from the road. Delicate arch was about the only one you couldn't see from the road. What a gorgeous place. All I could say was, "Oh my gosh"!! over and over again. We are going to come back next year and hopefully do some hiking. We drove through the campground and saw the little "house" that Howard and Linda lived in while they were workamping here for a few months. The campground was full, full, full. Apparently it's always like that. I can't see how those people can sleep in tents with the temps getting into the 30's at night. It's sure not for me.



Baby arch at bottom, the smallest arch in the park


Wilson's arch named after a local pioneer


This is called the Three Gossips



This is called Balancing Rock. Someday it WILL fall


This morning we left Arches with the intention of driving straight through to Salt Lake City. It was only 235 miles away. Our reservations at the Pony Express RV Resort are not until tomorrow so we decided we didn't want to drive through Salt Lake at 5:00 in the rush hour traffic and ended up stopping in Provo at the KOA. This is about the most primitive KOA we have stayed at. No wifi and no cable tv. That's not an issue for us since we have satellite tv and internet. We raised the aerial antenna so we could watch the local news. Tomorrow we only have about an hour to drive so no alarm and no rushing around to get out by 9:00. It's going to be so nice to see the kids and grandkids. We're going to be staying there for two whole months. What a treat!!

Utah landscape is just so amazingly BEAUTIFUL!!

La Hacienda de Los Barrios

Saturday John and Erica treated us to an early Mother's Day dinner because we'll be leaving here on Thursday. We went to La Hacienda de Los Barrios. It was founded and operated by Viola Barrios who was forced to open a restaurant when her husband was killed in a car accident in 1979 and left her with 3 young children to raise. Cooking is what she knew how to do. Knowing we were coming to San Antonio I have wanted to go to this restaurant ever since I saw the Food Network's Throwdown With Bobby Flay. It's a competition where Bobby Flay challenges local cooks with their specialties. Viola's daughter Diana competed with her puffy tacos. Viola was very particular about how tortillas are made and she didn't like the way Bobby and his staff were making them so she took over even though they were competing against Diana. Too funny. What isn't funny is that Viola was murdered last week by an eighteen year old next door neighbor with a bow and arrow. He then took her credit card and car and went on a mini shopping spree. He bought hair gel and a computer. He then went back to her house because he wasn't sure if she was dead so he set the house on fire. If this story isn't bizarre enough now the children of Viola are paying for this kid's defense so that he won't get the death penalty. They said, "That's what our mother would want." As Rod said, "They are much better people than I am." I agree, I couldn't forgive something like that.



John and Erica at Los Barrios



Yesterday John came over on his way home from work. I'm made macaroni and cheese and kielbasa. I have really gotten into putting bbq sauce on sausage since we've been here in Texas so I put it on the kielbasa too. It was pretty darn good.